Like my last post, here is some content that I meant to post earlier, but somehow overlooked. Enjoy…
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Using Meetup to Find Software Developers In Your Area
If you are seeking Software Developers in your City or State, I would like to recommend that you check out Meetup. Its VERY easy to use and an effective resource. Let me show you what I mean…
1. Go to Meetup.com/find and type in your criteria. In the example below, I am looking for Software Developers in Atlanta, GA. As such, I type in “Software Developer” and begin to type in Atlanta. As I do, Meetup gives me options to choose. (Wow! I did not know that there was more than one Atlanta. Did you?)
2. When the results return, I sort them by “Most Members” so I can target group leaders with considerable influence. For the sake of my demo, I choose the group with the largest membership (which is the first result below). 504 members at this writing.
3. On the group homepage you can contact the Group Manager and send them an email through the system. Why not say, “Hello Group Manager. I am looking to recruit Software Developers. Know anyone?”
4. When you click the “Email me” link a contact form appears. FYI, you have to be a member of the site to send that person an email. (No worries, its a freebie.)
5. Its also notable to point out that if you scroll down the page and look to the left, you will see a series of tags (keywords) that describe what the Meetup Group is about. If you click one of the keywords (arrow 1), Meetup will show you other groups similar to the group you are currently viewing and those that are near your present location.
How cool is that? Now let me take this a bit further and look at an open group. (You might not have noticed, but “The Atlanta iPhone Developers” group was private which means that you must be a member to see the discussions going on in the group.) Let’s take a peek at the “Atlanta Mobile Developers Group” which was the second result in my search.
In the “Latest Activity” section of the Group page are members discussing stuff. If they are discussing stuff, perhaps they are someone you may want to recruit. Let’s click on one of the member usernames (Damien P) to see what we can see.
At a glance, I noticed A) the location of the person, B) how to contact them, C) other Meetup groups and D) the organizer of the group I am presently reviewing.
Now I don’t have much info to go with, but I can discern that he might be someone I want to contact because he is a member of three groups focused on Software Development. If he is not a Software Developer, he is obviously connected to several of them; definitely worth a quick email inquiry.
Make sense? It does? Cool…
Happy Hunting!
-Jim
